She's Ready
by WindTreesandStars
Summary: She'd wanted this for as long as she had known him, and she was ready to let him know.  Rachel's POV while outside Finn's house in 3x05 "The First Time".


_A look into Rachel's thoughts about why she has waited to have sex and why she is ready now. I own nothing affiliated with Glee_, _or West Side Story_.

She's wanted this for as long as she's known him.

She thought about it, fleetingly, the first time she heard him sing. From the moment he opened his mouth and music poured forth, she was drawn to him - literally _drawn _to him, pulled by a force that she didn't quite recognize and just assumed was her inner star gravitating toward talent that could help her to shine more brightly. It was only after she got home that night and realized she was still feeling a pull, a tug toward someone other than herself-toward _him -_- that she knew there was more to this than talent and the desire to let her star shine. The attraction persisted even after she learned he was taken; it was compelling enough that it led her to try to persuade him to return to glee when he stopped showing up at rehearsals, excusing her pursuit of him, and her lying to his scary head-cheerleader girlfriend, by telling herself she was doing this for the glee club's sake, not for her own.

So yes, she was drawn to him from the start. But it soon became more than just feeling an attraction toward another person-toward this popular, hot guy from the other side of McKinley's social stratosphere who'd somehow wound up in the midst of the glee losers and who, even more miraculously, could sing. This was more than the old, standard story of loser girl falls for popular boy. Because when he stepped into the auditorium and opened up to them, confessing that he didn't like the guy they all had known him to be - when he made himself _one _of them and took charge, transforming them from a group of bickering wanna-bes all competing for the spotlight into a team competing _alongside _each other, working and singing _with _each other, until they weren't just six people singing but became a music-making unit . . . _that _was when she saw the real him, and _knew_ him, for the first time. She literally felt it explode in her body and soul; he uttered the words, "I've got the music," and in that instant love tackled her, knocking her senseless and falling down over her, moving through layer after layer until love permeated and pervaded her being and became firmly fixed in place.

She's come to realize that this isn't the scripted story she'd thought it might be about the hot male lead and the stunning young ingénue. It's a story about her, Rachel Berry, who knew she was a star but who was also fully aware that she wanted to fit in. Rachel Berry, a girl who wanted to have friends, to no longer be the butt of everyone's jokes, to be a part of something special. And it's a story about him, Finn Hudson, a guy who looked like he had it made and had it all together on the outside, but who on the inside feared he was nothing. Finn Hudson, who wanted to be more, and who, despite his fear of standing out from the crowd, kept showing her glimpses of someone who was better than the others, better than the herd - better than he realized he was or could be. It's a story about them, about Rachel and Finn, about the girl who wants everything too much and the guy who is afraid to let himself imagine wanting anything out of the ordinary, about the girl who wants to become a part of the team and the boy who is a team leader, about the girl who is a star and the boy who wants to believe that he can shine.

And it is a story about love. It's a story about them learning to love the things in themselves that they think are the most unlovable because somehow, amazingly, almost beyond belief, the other one loves them most for precisely these things they like least in themselves. It's a story about them falling in love _with_ each other. No matter what else has happened with her, and with him, and with them-whether things have been great or things have been awful or things have been somewhere in the murky in-between-the love has stayed; it is always there, in the best of times and the worst of times. It is a part, by now, of who she is, who he is, and who they are.

And so it - this - is inevitable. It never _wasn't_ going to happen, eventually, so long as they could find a way to be together. In some of the most fundamental ways she really doesn't have a decision to make; the tether between them, the unbreakable tie that they share which began to be woven around them the instant they started singing with each other, predetermined the forging of this bond as well. She's known it from the start, and just as she's been more than aware even when they've appeared to be furthest apart that she would always give anything to roll the dice just one more time to try to make things right between them, she's fully known that she would always try to roll the dice that would bring her to this moment, this experience, this shared encounter.

Her fathers have been open and forthright with her from an early age, believing that knowledge is both power and the best way to help someone be safe; information, they said about everything in life, allowed you to make intelligent, informed choices. So the _hows_ of sex - the mechanics, and its role in the reproductive process, and the ways to prevent reproduction from taking place when you weren't ready for it - are things she's known about since before she started puberty.

The _whys _though - why she would _want _to do this - had eluded her until she met him. Until he awakened something inside her that she hadn't realized was there, something lying dormant until he brought it to life and it opened its eyes and senses and refused to go back to sleep again, no matter how hard she tried to lull and dull it. She is not ashamed of the idea or the act; despite what some no doubt think of her - including him - she is not a prude. She'd meant it - every word of it - when she burst out over two years ago to tell all of the hypocritical cheerleaders and brainwashed (or should that be hormone washed?) guys that girls wanted sex just as much as guys did; the truth of the statement, which once she'd have made as an academic, logical, objective assertion, was suddenly, vividly, and unavoidably clear to her.

She isn't afraid of it - not at all. She had wanted it with him at the very start; she has wanted it with him for over two years; she wants it with him now. She's just been afraid of what it might mean for them, of how it would - and it _inevitably _would - change things between them. When you have something going that is as great as they have it, risking change is scary; it feels dangerous. Last year after they'd really started dating for the first time (the second time if you counted the aborted moments before he ran after his inner rock star and she ran into Jesse), she'd been so afraid that what they had could never last because she wouldn't be enough for him - that his status as one of the top kids in school and hers as one of the lowest would pull them apart - that she wouldn't let herself think of taking this next step. It was easier to put it off by coming up with all sorts of conditions to justify waiting than it was to admit how _much_ she wanted it - wanted _him_ - and how much she feared losing him. And then he did leave her, and it was even worse than she'd feared because she realized that, despite everything, she'd let herself believe he meant it when he said he'd never break up with her, and losing him after coming to believe she wouldn't _was_, in fact, worse than always wondering when he'd walk out the door.

If sex, and the even deeper connection she knew would come with it, had been added in on top of everything else back then, she might not have been able to survive the break up. Although, when being totally honest, she found herself more than once during those horrific months apart regretting that she didn't make love with him when she'd had the opportunity to, because she was aware that the chance might never come her way again and he was the one she wanted to experience this with.

She'd known from the start that it wouldn't be right with Jesse; she'd cared about him, yes, but never in the way she cared about Finn. Besides, her motives for being with Jesse in the first place were all intermingled with her ongoing feelings for Finn - wanting to show him that _somebody_ wanted her even if he didn't, wanting to make him jealous, wanting to show him that she was strong and not dependent on him. She'd asked advice back then from the other girls - especially looking to Santana, Brittany, and Quinn, all of whom had slept with guys who weren't "the one" for them - hoping to hear them say something that would justify the decision she'd made in holding Jesse off. When she realized just how jealous Finn still was in the wake of their Madonna mash-up, and, even more powerfully, once she learned that Finn was getting together with Santana, she rashly decided to go ahead and tell Jesse she was ready (even though she wasn't, and wouldn't ever be, with him), impulsively deciding it was the way to pay Finn back for turning his back on her and getting together, _again_, with Santana, the girl he'd left her for. And even with all of the mess that had ensued - with her lying and saying she _had_ slept with Jesse, and with Finn lying and saying he _hadn't_ slept with Santana - she never for an instant regretted her choice to stop things with Jesse. He wasn't the right one, and Puck, as she'd always known, wasn't the right one - because they weren't Finn. Finn was the one she had wanted, right from the start.

And now they are together again, stronger than ever before, and she loves him more than she has ever imagined was possible. And she is still afraid of the future - not that he'll leave her for a cheerleader, or that his reputation still matters more to him than his relationships; he's grown up, and beyond, that. No, she is afraid of where the future will take them - afraid that it will pull them apart, pull them in different directions, and that once parted they might never find their way back to each other.

So it felt - safer, more manageable, last week to tell herself that improving her acting was a valid reason for finally letting herself do what she's wanted to do all along. If they end up apart after this year, she can try to keep from hurting so much by telling herself that it had been about professional growth as much as anything - something a good artist has to be willing to do, even at the cost of pain. What Artie said had seemed to make sense; it was an argument she welcomed, in fact, if the rush of excitement that went through her when she contemplated what this meant was any indication. And besides, like she said: she loves him. She wants to be with him; this just gave her the excuse she thought she needed to try to blunt potential future pain.

But when she saw how much she hurt him, how he recoiled from her touch, how his voice was drowned in tears as he walked away from her, she knew just how much she had messed up again, and just how much she was still letting fear guide her actions. When she went back to the girls once more, she really was looking for something to help her figure out if she truly wasn't ready - because if she was, if they were, would she keep hurting him this way? And consulting her girls this time paid off; she found exactly the clarity she needed to understand the jumble of overwhelming feelings in her heart. This time it wasn't words from the girls who'd been with the wrong people that gave her what she needed; it was the statement from the one friend who _had_ found and been with the right guy for her at the right time, a guy she loved and was in love with. Tina was the one among them all who'd managed to make a relationship work longer than anyone else, probably because she knew how to do it like this - thoughtfully, deliberately, with clear eyes and heart.

As Tina spoke, she felt like she was hearing bells strike a true note of music. Tina's words about it being wonderful and right, with no regrets, because she was with someone she loved, were like a magical incantation, causing Finn's image to appear before her eyes. And she knows this is true: she's never felt more in her life - more pain, yes, but even more happiness and love and belonging - than she has since she met Finn. It isn't a matter of right or wrong, or of needing to protect herself from present or future pain - this is a chance to give and hazard all she has, knowing that true love, like all of the real, important things in life, carries risk and even greater rewards.

The feelings she has for Finn right now are so strong that this can enhance them, but not change them. She's already so deeply in love that losing him now, whether they sleep together or not, will inflict a wound that she will carry her entire life through. He's more than the boy she loves - he's her other half, her twinned spirit. Like she said to Blaine: in Finn, she has found her soul mate against all odds. Sex won't make the bond between them any stronger than it already is; making love together, however, will be a further way of sharing their inseverable connection.

So no, she doesn't know what the future holds, but she isn't going to let her fear of it control her any longer. Here, in this moment, she's put all fears aside. She loves him. She has him, and he has her. She wants to be with him in every way possible. She wants to share this with him - her first time, _their_ first time, what she hopes will be the first of a lifetime of such sharing.

First she needs to go and make right with him what she had done wrong in their last encounter; she needs to let him know that she has messed up, like she has before and like she is certain to do again, but that she realizes that, and that she's determined to make it right. And she needs to let him know that she is truly, fully, completely ready, and that it _will_ be right - more than right - because it will be them: Rachel and Finn, Finn and Rachel, together, as they have been from the beginning. One hand, one heart, one soul, one love.

Quietly, under her breath, she begins to sing the final verse of the song - she'll always think of it as their song, because while on the stage as Maria, she was singing to and for Finn. The pure, soaring words "even death won't part us now" lift into the stillness of the night sky as she walks up the pathway toward where he is, steps up onto the threshold, and raises her hand to knock on the door.


End file.
